Michel Rousseau stared unseeingly out the train window, rousing only at the grumbles and rustling of passengers. “What is it?” he asked of the man in the seat next to him.

“The rail is out from Caen to Paris,” the man said sourly, reaching for his package on the rack over the seat.

The journey was over before it began. “All the way?” Michel asked, dismayed. What now? “Surely not all the way. How far can we get?”

“Was it an Allied bombing?” a young woman with a small child asked.

“Probably the Resistance.” A middle-aged woman snatched up her basket. “Probably those thugs, the maquisards.”

“Those ‘thugs’ aid the Allies,” the young woman said indignantly. “Those ‘thugs’ risk their lives for us. Whose side are you on?”

“I am on the side of France,” the woman said, lifting her chin.

“Then I dare you to sing ‘La Marseillaise,’ you Vichy cow.”

“Don’t be a fool,” the woman hissed, indicating with a little jerk of her head to the two German soldiers at the front of the car. As if everyone on the train were not aware of them. “However proud you are of your thugs, did they get you where you wanted to go today? There is no civility left in France. No one acts rationally anymore.”

“I suppose you think Marshal Pétain is rational,” the young woman said, her face flushing, and in his heart, Michel cheered her boldness. “‘The trouble with France is you women!’” she mocked. “‘You did not produce enough babies to raise a decent army!’ First they screech at us for not staying at home to be good little mamas. Then they screech because we are not out there, making enough money to feed our families with so many men in camps. France starves because of us women.”

“Do not trouble us with truth, mademoiselle,” the man next to Michel cautioned with a sad smile. “We have not heard it for so long, you confuse us.”

The people close enough to hear this exchange leaned in, and began to add low-muttered opinions.

“She is right—Pétain and Laval are Nazi puppets. Everyone knows it now.”

“We didn’t think so in the beginning.”

“You live, you learn.”

The young woman began to gather up her bags—and hum “La Marseillaise.” She caught the hand of her child, lifted her chin, and hummed loudly and proudly. Michel’s heart began to fill, and he had to smile. He glanced about discreetly, and others smiled, too. One old man, likely a veteran of the Great War, blinked bright-blue eyes filling with tears.

The national anthem of France had been forbidden for nearly four years. To sing it in public was punishable by imprisonment, or if they thought you revolutionary enough, death. One would hear occasional snatches of it in crowded places, but it was forbidden to gather in a crowd these days unless approved. Even a wedding had to have approval, if the guest list was too long.

Michel found himself humming along. When the song was done and she looked at him, startled, he winked.

“Tiny rebellions keep the spirit alive,” he said. “Oui?”

“Oui, monsieur,” she said fervently. “God bless you, monsieur.”

“Oh, no—God bless you, mademoiselle.”

“Bless you, child,” the old man said.

“I’ll add my own as well,” said the man next to Michel. “You have made me feel an irrational bit of national pride. I feel French. Old-style French, and for that, God bless you, m’selle.”

Michel felt a wave of giddiness. Such an open exchange was beyond reckless. Collaborators were everywhere, people who would turn in their own mothers for wearing a tiny French flag or for doing as this brave young woman had done, humming the beloved national anthem.

This insidious collaboration with the spirit of the devil, this disease throughout France where common sense seemed to have fled the majority—how had it happened?

“We didn’t know what hit us,” he murmured. We lost our bearings, and then we lost hope.

And yet, Michel mused as he followed the others off the train, hope remained if a young woman could hum “La Marseillaise” on a crowded train, right under the nose of a Vichy supporter, right in the hearing of two German soldiers, who pretended not to hear so they wouldn’t have to deal with it.

“Tiny rebellions,” he mused, feeling better than he had in days. It would change once he got back to his apartment. But the little exchange on the train had been the most heartened he’d felt in a long while, and he wondered if the others close enough to hear felt the same. Today, he too felt French.

The telephone jangled, startling Michel from his thoughts.

“Hello.”

His brother’s voice greeted him. “You’re supposed to be in Paris.”

“The rail is down again.”

“All the way?”

“Apparently. We hadn’t even left the depot.”

“You sound cheerful.” François sounded suspicious.

“Yes, well, an amazing thing happened today. A tiny rebellion, in which I took part.”

“You rebel in ways great and wide, little brother. Tiny is not your style.”

“Today I hummed ‘La Marseillaise’ with a young woman on a crowded train.”

François laughed in delight. “You fool!”

“Yes. It was exhilarating. I thought the feeling would leave when I came home but it did not. I feel wonderful. I feel like champagne.”

“Did she know she sang with one of the greatest Resistance leaders in France?”

Michel put stockinged feet on the desk. “We didn’t sing; we hummed. They’ll have to add another clause to the law. But it was far more than that, François. It was what I felt from those around me. I felt hope. I haven’t felt it in so long, I think I’d forgotten what it was. I felt, in this tiny collective rebellion, that a far greater rebellion lay just below the surface. I can hardly describe it, it was—a gathering of strength. From each other, from angels, I don’t know where it came from, but I felt it, and I know others did, too. You should have heard what the man next to me said—such unhidden truth, spoken in the same air Nazis breathed. I could have danced with him.”

“Dancing is forbidden,” François said dryly.

“Be quiet. I am at the brink: François, I felt for the first time in a long time a return to common sense. That young woman reminded us of who we are. There was a scent of freedom all over the place—above us, around us, it came through the floorboards—as if humming ‘La Marseillaise’ summoned a holy presence. She will never know what she did for the heart of this worn-out old man.”

“You’re thirty-eight.”

“Today, I feel it again.”

“Well, brace yourself, Brother—before I’m done, you’ll feel younger yet. If anything, it’ll scare the daylights out of you.”

“Tell me full on. Today I am expansive and brave.”

“I have a plan to infiltrate the German brothel in Bénouville.”

“With what?”

“A German, of course.”

For the first time, the champagne bubbles went still. Michel took his feet off the desk. “François, if this line . . .”

“I have it checked daily, Michel. It is safe.”

“Then what are you saying . . . ?”

“I’m saying it is not too late to gather information on the bridges for the Allies. You told me Madame Vion says one of the prostitutes is sympathetic. My plan is perfect.”

Michel rose. “It makes me sick to hear you say this over an open line.”

“It is not open. I check it daily, dear heart. Do not worry.”

He knew the illusion would not last. He did not expect illusion’s truncation to come through his own brother. The last of the freedom trailed away, and he was home again. Back to the real world, and what he did in that world.

“François,” he said carefully. “Listen to me. This is not a game. Whatever—”

“Be expansive and brave, my brother, and in two weeks I shall deliver to you Lohengrin himself. It will take that long to heal the poor man’s head. He was bleeding and didn’t even know.”

He gripped the telephone. “You are all the family I have left.”

“Is this my own brother? Michel. I have been proud of you for so very long. I have come up with a plan that lets me hope, one day, you will be proud of me.”

“I am begging you—stay out of it! You have no idea what you’re about. Think of Marie. You would be tortured and shot, but your own sweet Marie—she would suffer as Jasmine did. They make examples of the women to weaken the men, and believe me, it works. She was tortured to death. Can you . . . can you comprehend those words? She died in my arms.”

Jasmine had made a mistake, and they never learned what it was. Was she denounced? By whom? How did she slip, what had she done to bring about her arrest? They never learned. She whispered one thing before she died, and that with a broken smile: “I didn’t talk.” Jasmine was the best agent Flame had. She’d worked for the Resistance cell in Caen for three years.

The invasion was coming; everyone knew it. But the closer France got to the whiff of freedom he had on the train, the worse things got. He’d seen plenty of brutality in the past four years, and yes, he could understand the use of some torture to procure vital information to win a war; but what they did to Jasmine wasn’t war. What they did to Jasmine was alien.

He had been so strong in the beginning. He wasn’t strong anymore. He had flashes of the young woman on the train, humming “La Marseillaise” with her boy. The thought of that brave young woman in Nazi hands made him weak. They knew how to get to the men, as if the devil spoke in their ears.

How could he describe such barbaric cruelty to a man as good and innocent as François? He didn’t want the images in François’s head any more than he wanted them in his own. Yet not to speak of it betrayed Jasmine. Not to tell it shamed the living for covering up Nazi atrocity. And if it prevented his brother’s involvement, he’d tell it in detail.

The telephone cord tethered him; he could not pace. “Listen to me. Must I tell it? I will tell it.” Submerged images surfaced, dizzying him. He could smell the untended wounds, he could hear tortured, labored breath. He could feel her in his arms. She was so small, a window broken in place, one nudge and all would shatter. He held her as long as he could. He made her last moments on earth safe. “They pulled out her teeth. They broke her fingers. They burned her, François; between her toes they lit pieces of cloth—”

“Michel, the invasion comes,” his brother cut in gently. “You said the Allies need to know about the bridges. We must give them what they need.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing! Stay out of it!”

“I have a plan. It is a good plan. You will see, Michel.”

Michel sank into the chair, fingers sinking into his hair. “François, you have not seen the beast.”

“Two weeks, my brave little brother. Give me two weeks. You will see.”

Several clicks, and the connection disengaged. Michel replaced the receiver. Back to his world, and what he did in that world.